Caterpillar Club
 

Milt,

Not sure I can answer all your points, but from personal experience, the recipient used to get the caterpillar from The Irving Parachute Company (as was).

My father had to rapidly exit from his Spitfire Mk V in 1942 just over the Channel/Brighton area, due to presence of cannon shells and bullets from some dastardly sausage-eaters' Me 109. Said items caused the venerable Spit to start burning and thus landing back at Biggin was a non-starter. He landed in the back of some old ladys garden and was greeted by the occupant with the question, "Good morning, would you like a cup of tea?" A Canadian Army doctor was passing and offered to take him back to a Police Station. During the journey he was force-fed whisky by the doc to "calm the nerves, fellah".

He was flying the next day and subsequently received his caterpillar from Irvings. It was inscribed on the reverse (stomach?) with the date of the incident, and as his aircraft had been burning, the eyes of the grub were red.

He wore a tie for most of his life afterwards and every tie has distinctive holes where the pin was affixed. I don't know how many ties were ruined that way, but it was a small price to pay for having a father....

As an aside to the story, his brother, ex-RAF and RN, not aircrew, but with an abiding passion for aviation, was at an air display a few years back, standing in the crowd rubber-necking. A Spitfire made its heart-warming appearance, to a collective sigh from the on-lookers. Chap next to my uncle mutters something about what a wonderful sight, etc and a conversation ensues. It transpired that the guy was an aviation historian and spent his time digging up ploughed fields looking for bits of WWII crashes and the last one he had found was the engine of my fathers' Spit in a field behind Brighton. Two people stand in absolute amazement at the capriciousness of fate.......

:ok:

Caterpillar Club Info
 

For further Info see:

http://www.caterpillarclub.org/irvin/irvin.htm

According to this web page, there were over 80,000 members in the 1950's.

Leslie Irvin, founder in 1922 of this, the most exclusive club in the world, decided there should be no social premises, no entrance fee and no subscription. The only class of membership would be "life", the only privilege "its continued enjoyment". Membership would be limited to those who had saved their lives in an emergency with a parachute of Irvin design. The gold caterpillar badge has the name and rank of the recipient engraved on the under side—and over 93,000 members proudly wear it.
All who qualify are cordially invited to apply for membership.

The eyes are ruby. This does not denote that the abandoned aircraft was on fire. They were all the same.
The "Carepillar" is actually a Silk Worm. Silk = Parachute.
The Club is still active.
If you parachute and land in the sea, lake, river etc and have to use your dingy you also qualify for the Goldfish Club.

Keep the stories coming. Again there is a need to collect these as they will not be retrievable in the future.

The following story was witnessed and verified to the author and was apparently reported in "Airclues" the RAF flight Safety magazine.


Date: Early 1960's

Place: RAF Wattisham, England.



A rather chubby instrument fitter wearing a winter 'cold weather' anorak was working in the cockpit (delving in the space behind the instrument panel) of a Hawker Hunter. The canopy had been removed for servicing. Suddenly he heard the click of a seat sear being removed and a clockwork mechanism (main gun firing mechanism?) running. The seat ejected and went through the hanger roof amongst a clatter of dropped tools and strange toilet like smells.

The techies were surprised to hear a muted "Get me out of here!" coming from the smoking Hunter.

The fitter had wriggled into the space in front of the seat, under the instrument panel and was now firmly wedged into the very small space.

The duty crash crew had to be called to cut him out and in so doing totalled the aircraft.

Subsequent tests showed that there was no way that the fitter could get himself into the space available....but he did!

Anyone ever hear of that story?

Seats fitted to most current RAF aircraft contain parachutes made by GQ, and so recent ejectees do not qualify for the Irvine caterpillar club. GQ run an equivalent "GQ Gold" club, membership of which entitles you to wear a GQ "winged parachute" gold pin - a bit gaudy compared to the caterpillar if you ask me, but it has your name and the date of your ejection engraved on the back.

I was on a SAR pre-selection course at Valley a few years back. We were just about to coast out and my instructor was going on about spotting smoke to help you find the wind.

At that point a HUGE cloud of black smoke comes down the side of the Wessex followed by a paracute. All hell breaks loose as ATC inform us of a Hawk crash, 1 pob.

We land on about 10 seconds after the ejectee hits the ground and we run over to offer assistance.

My Instructor "Hello mate - what's your name?"
Pilot: "I'm Lucky"
Instuctor: "I know that you're F£$%ing lucky mate, but what's your name?"
Pilot:" You no understand - my name Umlukee"

Irvin and GQ are now the same firm. GQ having bought Irvin some years ago.
Still making Parachutes. They are now based in South Wales.
The Catepillar club is still going.

Re. the Hunter fitter incident and the ability of people to fit into/through impossibly small areas - yes it can happen.
Back in the 50's, a Hastings crashed at an 'up-country' strip in Aden. It caught fire and, with fuel tanks containing AvGas, was a good place not to be! The co-pilot was a gentleman of rather substantial girth and, despite this and a broken ankle, left the aircraft via the DV window. For the significance of this, one needs to find a Hastings and check the measurements of said DV window ......... quite impossible!!

I was told today that the yellow "bar" above the visor on the Mk 3a helmets was a gravity bar that lowered the visor (if it was up ) on ejection.

Anyone confirm this? Or was it just a device for pulling down and raising the visor as needed?

Both. Could be used manually to lower the visor, or, on ejection the bar automatically dropped the visor.

By the way, just seen your reply ref the "GQ" club. Does this mean that the pin on my DJ and the certificate on my wall are figments of my imagination? I wish the 6 months on crutches had been. Or should I have held out for a caterpillar? I

Jim,

Timelord is dead right but note that the bar only lowered it - I seem to recall there was a small lever on the side that was used to raise it back up.

Have you managed to collect any of those square suitcases that were issued with them at the time to keep them in? I think most ended up in guys lofts!

High Speed Ejection

Does Tony Svennson still hold the record for the highest indicated air speed ejection when he departed from a Mirage III supersonic at around 10,000 ft in a near vertical spiral dive close by Avalon, Australia..circa 1965.

Flight test instrumentation had him at 850 Kts CAS.

Leg retraints were inadequate and he only just survived massive leg/thigh trauma.

Recovered enough to fly again and do some tutoring at ETPS.

Where are you now Tony?

Chris K,

The yellow bar on the Mk2 helmet lowered and raised the visor, either manually or in an ejection. The small metal "weighted" arm came down with 'G', and locked the visor down.

The Mk3 was the helicopter helmet, and the visor was on a central track: no yellow bar.

My square box is in the storeroom: along with the Mk2 inside it ;)

That Yellow Bar
 

Long time ago but ..........

I thought that the visor could be lowered and raised by the yellow bar. The visor would also snap down under 'g' (and possibly also by the action of the seat blind, on ejection?) - whereupon the visor was locked down, and could only then be released by a lever on the side of the helmet.

Ah, JE beat me to it!

Happy memories of silicon? fluid dripping down your ear when one of the seals (frequently!) split, and a bollo£king if you were caught carrying your helmet by its chinstrap!

Not strictly true. There were 3 types of Mk3 - A, B and C. The 3A and 3B both had a single visor on a a central track (with no yellow bar as you say) - the A was used with a boom mike for helicopters whereas the B had side hooks for use with an oxy mask by FJ chaps.

The 3C had side hooks and twin visors hinged at the sides, i.e. instead of a central track.

An anorak of an post I'll admit, but there you go :D

Krystal, the F-4 incident of 1975 you referred to is probably this one, the only catastrophe that I actually almost witnessed:

I was strapping into a Phantom and was horrified to see one of our squadron aircraft just airborne, heading west towards Holland, with the biggest, brightest flame I have ever seen trailing it. I was certain that things were terminal but didn't have the courage to express my convictions firmly (picture the BoI: 'So, Flt Lt Zoom, why did you instruct the crew to leave a perfectly serviceable, expensive aircraft?' You know the feeling.) so I tried to warn the crew on the radio in a not-particularly-positive manner that the aircraft was on fire. They didn't hear me anyway and continued out over Holland, trying to establish whether or not the fire warnings were spurious. Eventually, they lost control of the aircraft and the pilot instructed the nav to go, which he did safely. However, with the rear canopy gone, suction kept the pilot's canopy firmly in place and the pilot began to think that he was doomed. Eventually, after a considerable loss of height, a change of pitch or similar altered the aerodynamics and the canopy and seat worked properly in a low and slow ejection.

The nav landed in a field and wasted no time in gathering up his belongings and following a Dutch farmer to his farm for a couple of swift Jenevers before phoning base. I can't vouch for the Army wife bit. Meanwhile, the pilot landed in a different field, where he proceeded to inflate his dinghy, fire his flares, send out SOSs, etc.......surrounded by a large and admiring crowd of Dutch school kids from the school that the aircraft had just missed. At the BoI, the pilot was commended for his post-prang actions whereas the nav.....wasn't!

The Dutch villagers honoured the squadron by presenting us with an oil painting of the fireball (!), and we struck up a good relationship with the village until the squadron disbanded at the end of the year.

The Phantoms were modified with explosive canopy bolts to prevent this happening again (forgotten the detail) but, not relevant to this incident, the aircraft never got the command ejection system that it should have had from Day 1.

I saw the pilot on telly a few years back flying for a budget airline. If he is reading this, perhaps he would like to correct the errors/myths/libel.

Zoom.
Many thanks for the memory jog :ok: Please see your PM's

K n C

The Mk 16 E fitted to the JSF is rumoured to have an auto eject function in the hover mode. If the donkey stops, out you go. No make your mind up time.

What do you think of this dev??

Milt,

I read a story a while ago about some Russian blurk who held the record for both the highest and fastest ejection. Memory serves me very poorly but I believe the story was thus: Foxbat at M2.6 and 62,000 feet with a mechanical disintegration of one engine. Subsequent yaw produced roll-yaw coupling and the airframe began to tumble and disintegrate. Said Russkie, fortunately clad in space suit punches out successfully and remarks that he spent over 10 minutes in the seat while the seat descended on its drogue 'chute before auto-separation occurred!

What a ride.

Feel free to correct my recollections, anybody who knows the story better.

Jimgriff,

When I used to fly the SHAR we did a simple calculation to see how much time you had before your seat was out of limits following a total thrust loss in a 75 ft hover. From detecting the problem, recognising its severity, deciding to eject and getting the handle pulled to its extremity you had 1.1 seconds.

Would John Farley Care to come in on the last post re the SHAR?

John You must have done some intricate calculations re this in your time?